Deadly Sin

Pro: Story? Maybe.

Con: Lets see. Everything else I guess. First, the controls are totally wacky. Only stick works, buttons are awkwardly chosen. No settings available whatsoever. So can't change controls, can't mute music and no, the muting of windows system sounds is not an acceptable solution if I want to listen something else while playing.
Lack of information. Game has a "skill tree" and you need certain amount of skill points to get a new skill. Guess what, you have no way of knowing how many skill points you have at any given moment. Only way is to try and see if you can choose a new skill. Also you can debuff mobs, except again, you have no way of knowing if it went through or missed. Game doesn't tell if mobs are buffed/debuffed.
What else? Balance is all over the place really, trash mobs taking an eternity to kill (fun fun) and really seem to give totally outta hat amount of exp. Also normal hits tend to do pathetic damage, so you're forced to use skills/magic every turn if you wanna get through before sun expires. Itemization is bit off too, but I suppose that's manageable. Though again, there are no info on your magic resistance and game happily uses defense and armor as same thing which might confuse some people.
Despite all that, being a some sorta masochist, I spent 22h on this game and was on the end part when my rage meter finally got filled. I entered an area where a small flame follows you and you have to try and find a way through a maze with switches. Thing is, you're forced to follow the road, but flame can skip corners as it pleases, so it will hit you. You don't insta die, but you also can't heal. So basically only way through seems to be save scumming and that's not really something a good or even mediocre game would have you do. Thus it seems I will just uninstall because why bother. Game is pretty damn short anyway if you take out the forced grinding of levels.

Crashed my *monitor*. Not my computer, but my monitor.

It's quite good. Lots of technical problems but overall a great amateur attempt with above average writing.

(still has a few annoying indie tropes like random references to other games, but it's rare)

PITA to even play.
No way to edit resolution and it's set to ultra-low with full screen. Screws up my icon placement on desktop.
No way to edit keybinding and controller settings.
*OMG* I've never seen a worse keyboard layout. Space, Shift, A, X, Esc with arrow keys to move.
Controller is just as bad. "X" is accept, "A" is run (which you have to HOLD IN), "Y" Skills menu, B is Menu/Cancel. Just a PITA to use these non-standard layouts, with no way to edit.
Combat is ultra dull. Needs some animation, and a cursor pointing to who have currently selected.
Most of the art is good, except the handdrawn profile pic of Empress, which is *way* below "barely acceptable" quality.
Keyboard layout is too screwed up to even try it. Controller is making my fingers hurt having to hold in the sprint button non-stop.
Bought *very* cheap in a bundle. Made by the same people who made Symphony of War, which is exceptional.

This is a really good game! The art is simple and nice to look at, I love the exciting music and the characters are funny and lovable. The gameplay and story is linear, but that doesn't bother me. I think the plot is simple and well told. My favourite characters are Belinda and Glade, as they're humorous and witty. :)

One thing though - this game involves a lot of grinding (fighting opponents and monsters to level up and progress through the game). I had to work my way up to level 18 before being able to beat the opponent in the fort that hates Glade, and being on level 19 and 20 did not help me defeat the Necromancer in the desert. All of this is in 14 hours of game play. So definitely take breaks and save a lot, because this game takes up a lot of time.

This game is very good and a lot of fun. The only problem I have with the game is that the UI is a bit unintuitive and sometimes completely unhelpful. Did my poison work? How much damage is it dealing? When does it wear off? The game doesn't tell you this type of information and it's a little frustrating. But overall, that is a minor gripe. Everything else is pretty great.

i review games on steam after i 100% complete them! check out my reviews to see all the games i have completed!

deadly sin is a fun and simple rpg with a pretty standard story and gameplay. i genuinely enjoyed the story, as well as the characters and art style. a overwhelming majority of the negative reviews harp on the last few boss fights, saying they're broken, unbeatable, etc. but as others have said, it's not impossible to beat them and it's actually a lot easier than people make it out to be if you use the right status effects. that is really the only critique outside of "x game is better" but this game is very solid for what it is, which is a decently-fleshed-out rpg that you can buy for less than a dollar when it's on sale. it's also this developer's first game on steam. and if this is anything to go by, i'm looking forward to playing the rest of their games and seeing how they progressed in making games.

it's really good, but sudden difficulty spike for the last chapter and poor economy prevents from enjoying the last chapter - a lot of grinding is required which is really not my thing anymore, and end game gear is outrageously overpriced...

I am not very sure how to rate this game. There are areas done quite well with interesting enough of characters but alot more done quite badly. This game is very rough and very old school. Even at a very high level, the normal mobs can one shot you even if your characters had a very good armor. And the final two bosses can only be won one way. There seems to be alot of customization but after a while, you will know that there is only one way to win, I struggled and wanted to give up towards the last dungeon which is super tedious. In the end i pull through. Hopefully the other games from this studio is more balance

This game is terrible, but should be played by everyone who has ever wanted to make an RPG; the numerous errors, bizarre plot elements, failed ability to keep a story thread going, and inconsistent characterization could teach ANYONE what not to do.

A decent old school RPG. I played Skyborn first, which is how I got here. Deadly Sin is an earlier game, so it is rougher and less well-made... but it's also cheaper. If you're not used to this kind of game, it'll probably seem a bit slow and tedious to you. My playtime is a reflection of my tendency to want to find everything by exploring, and making some fights longer using the Steal ability a lot. I'm not a fan of excessive grinding.

Positives:
* The Threat system makes fights more strategic, instead of a matter of just spamming the same best attack skills every single turn every single battle. It is not as well-executed as the devs' later games, though.
* Enemy spawning in each area can be disabled once you reach its crystal
* Good story
* Good music
* Good art (non-stock for a lot of things)

Neutral:
* Depending on your play style, some of the late-game equipment may be totally useless to you
* Dori, one of the two tanks you're expected to keep at the highest threat, is difficult to keep enemies focused on in the late game because her special attacks are easily overshadowed in damage by literally all 4 other characters, and her Challenge skill is far too expensive.
* There are some things you may want to backtrack to get or that you assume you'll be able to get later, only to discover there is virtually no backtracking possible.
* Enemies can Mug you; however, you're told this and that you need to invest in gems, which cannot be stolen and can be traded back for their full GP value. It gives setting out more of a sense of something you need to prepare for, since you don't know when you'll next be at a market.
* The minigames were interesting, but not well-explained. Only discovered cats reduce the Alert level in the stealth game due to someone mentioning it online.

Negatives:
* Balance issues
* Some late game grinding is necessary to fill out your skills
* Many skills do not properly scale, becoming useless later on
* Neither of the last two bosses are vulnerable to damage from the exorcism skill, which is absolutely insane, given both were vessels for demons.
* Fights with normal enemies can be pretty time-consuming, especially if you use Steal a lot.

[hr]

As to people who gave up on playing the game due to the next-to-last boss fight against Vanity: yes, the fight is badly balanced. One of the ways it's not balanced is she is 100% vulnerable to being stunned by Dori's Shockwave skill. Meaning if you can keep Dori alive until she has 12 OP (which should be round 2 if you max her OP gains out), you can stun lock Vanity for the entire fight from that point on. Meaning you can totally disregard Threat and completely murder Vanity without her being able to attack for the entire rest of the fight, as long as you keep using Shockwave (or rolling the dice by using Heroic Swing). I recommend maximizing Winchester's MP gains and having Innervate so he can recharge other magic users to make the fight go by faster.

The last boss fight is only slightly harder, but definitely longer. The last boss has three separate parts: head, claw, and body. The head can be stunned (sometimes), and attacking the body while the head is not defeated or stunned results in counter attacks. The claw needs to just be defeated (lowest health). The body has massive physical resistance until the claw and head are defeated, so do not bother with it until they're out of the way. If you're not losing but wondering if there's a point to actually finishing the fight the game is scripted to tap out after the body has lost 10% of its health; it doesn't really have the HP it's listed as having.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this game, but started to lose interest as I entered the first dungeon and the path split into several different directions and the enemies became more powerful. It is too difficult trying to explore all of the different paths when the enemies are powerful.

A fun RPGMaker game!
Not sure what several of the other reviews are talking about. The battle with Ardelia is super easy- I paralyzed her once and she remained that way for most of the fight. Three out of your five characters can unlock paralyzing skills, so I don't know why that doesn't seem to have occurred to the other players.
I honestly didn't like Skyborn very much- I think this one is much better. Lots of variety in the equipment available so that you can mix and match and choose how you want to round out your characters. Exploration is rewarded with treasure chests, which is always fun. Storyline wasn't mindblowing but it was fun! And honestly, it's $5- that's pretty great considering I got over 30 hours of gameplay out of it.

Well, first of all I'm amazed that there aren't other reviews for this game, despite others I've seen! Well anyways, Deadly Sin was one of the 4 games I got part of the Dancing Dragon RPG Complete Bundle, and I was liking it... for awhile at least. I won't be too long winded about this, so I'll keep it simple. The game doesn't have a fair sense of balance. I, unfortunately, am unable to continue past a certain boss fight in a certain city, simply due to the fact that no matter what you do, she can and will instantly kill your party members. The worst part too? You can't revive them. And the even WORST part? This battle isn't scripted, it's required to defeat the boss. Either there was something I did wrong, or this fight wasn't balanced with the content before it. If this boss was actually made doable, I wouldn't even be here writing this. Also, why isn't Lorelei's "Divine Calamity" skill useful on this boss? She's clearly a demon, and yet she's treated as a non-demon monster? *sigh* I really hope Deadly Sin II, Echoes of Aetheria, and Skybound are better than this unbalanced game... at least the Skill Tree mechanic was cool! But despite what this game has in terms of good content, the unbalanced enemies and bosses ruin it.

It's games like this that make me wish Steam used a 1-5 star rating system instead of a binary recommend/not system; there's a lot in this game that I liked. The story, while predictable, was solid. The combat, although problematic in ways I will discuss further below, was entertaining, with an interesting skill-tree mechanic. The storyworld was intriguing. And, as with all games from this dev, it had a certain, indefinable charm.

Yet, I don't think I would recommend it. The combat challenge level was kind of all over the board...there were times when I would be acing the combat and then suddenly get wiped out by same-level grunts. And, worst of all, the big-bads (ESPECIALLY the final boss) were just so, frustratingly, keyboard-smashingly, difficult. I almost quit about halfway through because I got terribly stuck on one of the bosses, but decided to stick with it...only to be in the same position (after a butt-load of final-level grinding, I might add) with the end boss, and chose to just swear off finishing this particular game. Further, there were still some frustrating bugs in the game, such as the character sprites not recognising damage/death during combat, or, on two occasions, the game just freezing up during combat. Because of this, I don't think I could recommend it, it's just too inconsistent, and the plot and storyworld aren't original or interesting enough to carry the game despite that.

I hate having to give this a negative review, because I really appreciate this dev's work, but I would generally say: give this one a pass and go spend your money on Skyborn instead.

I have decided to write this review, because all the negative ones it got.
They almost dissuaded me from playing it.
It's not about them not recommending the game, but the reasons they give as to why they don't. I finished the game and I don't even understand what some of them are even talking about.

The game is either the, or one of the first tries of the developers and it kind of shows.
It's unrefined at times, but in my experience, not enough to be a bother.

Starting from the beginning.

The characters are mediocre at best, but the dialog is generally nicely written and entertaining, so it balances out.

The story is nothing special, but still solid. You essentially play a woman you discovers she is the rightful heir to a throne that was stolen from her when she was a child. So you set out with your new companions to reclaim it from an empress who, let's say proves to be a bit of a menace to humanity. That's pretty much it, but with more dragons and prime evil demons from hell trying to kill you than I let to believe. Yeah, there is a lot of shit going on and are casually swimming in it.

Gameplay wise now.

The game has no difficulty settings, which seems to be the reason it drives people away.
Having said that, I found the game to be of easy to medium difficulty with the only hard area being optional. But if you are anything like me, in an rpg there are no "optional" areas, I refuse to acknowledge that term. I will come back to the game's difficulty later. Let's just say this game shouldn't have the "casual" tag it currently holds on Steam. Not much in common with Eurotruck Simulator here.

Now, if you do not have a bit of experience with rpgs of this kind, you could end up having a hard time.
There is a threat mechanic which is presented in the form of a % and in most cases corresponds directly to the chance of each character being targeted. You will want your tankiest character to have the highest one, especially in boss fights, so threat management is a core element of combat.
The combat is turned based and each character has a large collection of skills (around 20 each) which you unlock progressively. These skills include damaging (daah) healing/curing and buffing / debuffing ones, to use in various cases. Admittedly you will end up usually using only a select few of them, but for almost all of them there came a time when I was glad I had it. 
Except "slow poison" and  "protection from holy". Seriously, the first one is just LIES and the second one is as useful as "protection from good alignment" in dnd games.

You will end up unlocking all of them, so there is no real choice to be made. On the other hand you also can't go wrong, which might be a concern as one of Deadly Sin's biggest problems, is the lack of precise information.
For example there are skills that state in the description "increases party's intelligence" or "decreases enemies' strength". How much? Well, I guess that much.
Lack of info is always annoying, especially in these kind of games.

I understand why some people found the combat repetitive, but personally I only got tired of an area twice. And one them was optional 

Each of the areas of the game you enter is divided in smaller ones. Each on of those is like walking in the grass in pokemon games. Microsoft word just underlined the word pokemon. Shame on you Microsoft word. Anyway you will be getting random encounters every few steps (more than a few actually), which you can end by finding a crystal in each of the smaller areas and deactivating it.

Coming back to the difficulty. I found it to be consistent throughout the game and I never had to grind for either gold or exp.
If you use your skills efficiently no random encounter will pose a problem and after you fight a particular group once or twice, you will have learned how to quickly dispose of them.
There where a few people who found the last boss either very hard or unbeatable.
One flat out claimed that it is impossible to beat some of the bosses without cheating, like what ¿

Small spoiler here.
Not only did I find it pretty manageable, but in most of the above mentioned cases, it's not even the final boss they are talking about. After that there is one more large area with the "true" last boss this time, and a huge optional one which is a lot harder than anything else in the game. To be fair the area before the "true" last boss is way longer than it should be at that point, but come on it's like one area.

I was actually surprised by how much extra content there was in the end.

Last but not least, the music is great. Not only in this, but in all of their games.

Overall I enjoyed the game a lot and I believe that at least fans of turned based rpgs and especially people who like mastering a game's mechanics like me, would certainly enjoy it too.

This is a nice game, the story and music are good.
But there is a real problem in it, at around 60% of the game, your progression basically stops compared to the enemies', it doesn't matter if you get 5 levels, or 10, or a sword +100 str, it will be just as hard.
Even common enemies have way too much resistance to everything, and you need to deal with them like mini bosses, which can get quite bothersome in a random encounter game. If you manage to get to the final boss, you just can't kill it, unless you have 2 hours and make no mistakes.
If you want to know the story, because you played DS2 (which was awesome), get some cheats and do it in the bad way... The end is very good.

The first Dancing Dragon I ever played was Skyborn... it was magical, I really love that game, I beat it like 3 times. When I saw this little game, I imagined that it was going to be something similar to skyborn, and it really was, all the nostalgic feeling was too good. Despite the battles are somewhat repetitive and the monsters attacking me every 3 seconds(that REALLY annoys me) I was enjoying the game, until the final chapter, OMG the grinding... I'm not even complaining about the SUPER OP BOSS, I'm talking the BORING gameplay I had to do in the end of the game. In Skyborn, I could not wait to beat the game, and the AWESOME story was mainly the reason for this excitement. The Deadly Sin story is ok, what killed the game for me was the endless, boring, super hard, super repetitive stuff we had to do at the end(I didn't even finished it, so maybe there's more than I seen).

In Skyborn I beated the game 3 times, but this one... I'm gathering all my strenght to do so, I played almost 40 hours, and I'm really frustated with the game. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY HERE. GO BUY SKYBORN if you want to have a nostalgic and fun experience.

Well, game finished. What can I say... the story isn't bad, but I was bored - in every area there are only few types of monsters always reapearing, every battle takes some time (3-6 rounds), the encounters are quite frequent, and I ended up using usually the same moves, what made the game repetitive. No maps too, sometimes you end up blindly wandering to find the right way.

There are few minor flaws - some monsters are starting with health 30000/99999, or they have healing skills with no effect. And Ardelia - has 50000 health, after killing one of my character she heals 10 000. But after killing my Belinda she got like +100 000 health and had something about 126 000/50 000 health?

I got all the way to the end of this game. I'd done a ton of grinding, and my characters had literally the best equipment in the game. I had the expensive Iridium bow and arrows for Lorelei (the main character), the Irididium daggers for Glade, the super expensive dreadnought armour and gauntlets for Dori (the tank) and a whole bunch of other stuff besides. The game considered me overlevelled, and I was hardly getting any skill points from battles (more on that later).

Despite all this, no matter what I did, I could not defeat the final boss. She is literally impossible, even with extensive grinding, to the point I don't think the devs even playtested this game. If she defeats one of your party members, she gets a ton of extra health, and you can't revive them for the rest of the fight. Basically, you have to beat her without anyone going down even once for the entire fight.

This would be fine, except SHE CAN KILL ANY OF YOUR CHARACTERS IN A SINGLE HIT, EVEN IF THEY HAVE FULL HEALTH AND YOU HAVE THE BEST ARMOUR IN THE GAME. Nothing you can do prevents this. The two tank-y characters, Dori (the armoured knight) and Glade (the evasive theif) both have moves that draw the enemy's attention, making it more likely they will be attacked instead of the other characters. However, even Dori can't stand up to this monster's attacks, and even with his evasion up move, Glade will be hit and instakilled. Have I mentioned she can inflict every status ailment, act several times in a single turn, and, best of all, the heroine's ultimate attack, supposedly designed for killing beings like the final boss does almost nothing to her?

I gave up on this game because I couldn't beat the stupidly unfair final boss. Now I can't see the ending and feel like I've wasted all the time and effort I put into this game, not to mention my money. I have a few other issues with the game as well, however.

The game is very linear, which isn't a problem in and off itself for a game like this, but there is a noticeable spike in difficulty as you enter each new area. Pretty soon, you'll be struggling even with mook enemies if you haven't yet got the strongest equipment available at that point in the game.

Levelling up does almost nothing- the stat gains are meagre at best. 50% of your characters' growth comes from equipment (weapons, armour, accessories) 45% comes from upgrading your charcters' skills (which is separate from levelling up and requires skill points that have nothing to do with experience points) and only 5%, if that, comes from gaining levels.

This makes obtaining gold of utmost importance, which brings me to my next gripe. In every area of the game there are enemies with an ability called 'mug'. Basically they hit you, and in addition to dealing damage, they take some of your coins. The amount stolen is a set percentage of your total gold carried, and you don't get it back when you beat the enemies, meaning if you're carrying more than a paltry sum of gold, you will start making a net loss in gold from enemies. This is very annoying because the dungeons are very long and convoluted, and most of the enemy encounters you will face will be in the middle of these dungeons where there is no opportunity to go back and spend your gold that you've been accumulating or convert it into gems (which can't be stolen). With the importance of up-to-date gear, this practically necessitates grinding.

There are several instances of typos throughout the story. I lost count of the number of times I had to read 'diety' instead of deity, and there are lots of other examples. Not a huge deal I admit, but that final boss has put me in a really bad mood.

Also there are a couple of stealth minigames shoehorned into the story and the second one is impossible to complete as intended. Your 'alert meter' (fail state when it fills up completely) rises rapidluy to full WHILE THE CHARACTER YOU'RE PLAYING AS IS STILL TELLING YOU WHAT TO DO AND YOU CAN'T EVEN MOVE. Like I said before, clearly not properly playtested. Fortunately, you don't have to succeed to move on with the story (not that this makes the game possible).

In summary, if you like seeing the end of games you buy, do NOT get this game. I thought I could be hardcore and power grind my way to victory against the final boss after my initial failures, but no, I am convinced it is literally impossible. Doing more than your max hp to your strongest characters even when you're a high level and have the best armour, and being unable to revive downed characters? What absolute garbage. Out of curiosity, I tried to youtube the ending, but I couldn't find any footage of anyone beating this game. Maybe that's because it's obscure, but I still find it very telling. As someone who has played this game up to its ludicrous final boss, my advice is: stay away.

As a person who played and enjoyed Deadly Sin II and Skyborn, I saw that this had come out and decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. The dearth of reviews here also made me figure I would contribute.

Yes, this is an RPG maker game; but like DSII and SB, it has alot of custom content, probably moreso than most of the Aldorlea games (though those are fine too). I can say this with some confidence since I used to make a RMXP game myself but which never got finished due to my other projects.

Anyway; I will say that DS1 is considerably more rough around the edges than its successor, though I guess this is to be expected.

After 5 hours of play (just done the desert) my slight issues include:
>> There is somewhat less freedom to build the party; for example, I built Teresa in DS2 as my prime DPS rather than my tank (which was Carrion), because I could; but here, for example, Dory is the only real tank. Its also rather hard to pull aggro off Winchester when Dory's biggest aggro pulling move requires 50 OD. Again though, this the hazard of playing the second game after the first.
>> The plot just kinda happens to our good princess. I'm rather confused about her in general. On one hand, Lorelei seemingly has some clarity of the coup de tat that deposed her (?) since she talks about it early on. However, she later asks Winchester why he didn't tell her about the fact she was a princess. Perhaps I just missed or got confused over something there? Perhaps this will all be cleared up later on in the plot though.

However, whats good:
+ Though I moaned about customisation; thats only because I'm spoilt, its still pretty decent and way more involved than most RPG maker games. Only the other Dancing Dragon games and Doom & Destiny are comparable in the same category.
+ The character battle animations are good. They're nicely hand drawn and well implemented, and I know that can be a serious pain in RPGmaker. Most of these games don't animate their actual characters at all (they just show the weapon/attack animation; and actually, that was my one big 'meh' point on Skyborn) so I give this a massive plus.
+ Progression feels about right; I tend to be the sort to wander round and get all the treasure, but rarely did I feel like it was taking too long (except maybe a little towards the end of the desert).
+ Its dangerous carrying a massive treasury. A little thing, but all those mugging thief enemies actually became the bane of your existence. The game tells you to carry your wealth in gems at one point, and you should listen! That said; WTF happens to the gold they steal; you never get it back!?
+ Some other reviews comment on bugged maps and unbeatable bosses. Not seen any myself, though will update if I do.

Anyway; its worth it enough, at least for me. I would also check out the other games by this group and I hope that they release an excellent DS3 or something eventually!